Trivial frustration

*argh!* So close, but no wins for our team in trivia Monday night.

Barb was hemming and hawing about coming to trivia. She had worked all weekend and wanted a day of relaxing at home before her Tuesday and Wednesday night pool leagues. Rod had to pick up Alan as Ed's car still had troubles. So I walked to the trivia contest. The bar is only 3/4's of a mile away and the weather was decent. The wind was less than 10 mph and the temperature was only a few degrees below zero.

It had snowed a few inches Sunday night / Monday morning but most everyone had shoveled the snow off their sidewalks. I only had to walk on the street a few times.

Gene and Bonnie were there already and Rod and Alan arrived shortly after I did. Austin and Barb didn't come.

Tonight Rod came up with our team's name: Anna Nicole's Baby's Father. Our team name got the biggest laugh for team names.

None of us had watched the Granny - I mean Grammy - Awards Sunday night so we had to guess for the answer. Subconsciously I must have heard an ad as I suggested it was the 49th Annual Grammy Award show, and was correct.

We started off the first game on a hot streak as we got many of the first 10 questions correct. We fell apart on the last questions as we chose the wrong answers for a number of them (the southern most city is in Chile, not Argentina). We ended with a score of 14 correct which was only good for second place. The lawyer/legal team - naturally - won with 17 correct answers.

The second contest was more challenging. The answers our team got correct:

• I knew that Little Annie Fannie was the cartoon strip in Playboy magazine (I do more than just look at the photos!)
  

• Pele was know as the Black Pearl,

• a Mexican hairless is a chihuahua,

• "Good night, Mrs. Calabash--wherever you are!" was said by Jimmy Durante,

• Superman's boss is Perry White,

• Bashful is alphabetically the first of the Seven Dwarfs,

• Ringo in the 1939 movie, Stagecoach, was played by John Wayne,

• First day covers are collected by Stamp collectors,

• Sir Walter Scott was associated with the settling of Virginia,

• The color of lights on a ship's port side is red,

• the poet at JFK's inauguration was Robert Frost,

• Audrey Meadows played a housewife on the Honeymooners,

• The Pacific island with Mount Suribachi is Iwo Jima.
  

Questions we failed on:

• The horse's name in the song, Jingle Bells, is: Bob tail Ring

• The most expensive seats in a bull fight are "in the shade".

• Al Jolson, Danny Kay, and Neil Diamond all played the Jazz Singer. Saying they are all Jewish was not enough.

• Mau Mau uprising was in Kenya - not South Africa

• The alliance of 57 nations was for WWII, not the first Gulf War.

• J. Paul Getty said "A billion dollars doesn't go as far as it used to.", not Rockefeller
  

We got 14 answers correct again. The winners tied with 15 correct answers. We were so close. I think if we had Austin and Barb with us we would have won.


For the quarters question "Who was the first President to elope?", many quarters went into the bucket for incorrect answers. When the guesses became infrequent we got a clue that his name was closer to the end of the alphabet. The answer was Tyler in 1841.

For the question as to "What did ___ (forgot the name) invent in basketball?" Many, many wrong answers. Bonnie won with "dribble". Gene had suggested she guess that answer. By now the really good prizes were gone and Bonnie had the choice of a box of Rice Crispie bars or a hat. She chose the Rice Crispie bars. To our surprise they were soft - and edible.

The final quarters question (for the bucket of quarters) was: What does a Belonephobic fear? Bonnie guessed blood. Wrong but we were told it was close. I thought of needles. Two people were ahead of me and the second person guessed needles and won. Argh! So close again!

The bar provided free food this evening. Someone cooked up pheasant stew, deer sausage, and boiled potatoes in a sauce. All very tasty. Our team ate during the break between the two contests.

After trivia night was over I walked home to get more exercise and to clear my lungs of cigarette smoke from the bar. *Ugh!* As the snow crunched under my shoes steam rose from sewer grates into the night air. Minot set a record overnight low temperature last night with a temperature of -21 F.

Next week the bar is not having a trivia night as they are having a rock/paper/scissors contest.